“Are you more desperate to get a better deal when you’re poor? I guess you are.”

That was John Auers, executive vice president of oil industry consulting firm Turner Mason & Company, describing the oil industry as being “poor” and “desperate” to Bloomberg.

As the oil industry cries poverty due to low oil prices in an effort to justify its attempts to lift all restrictions on exporting crude oil produced in the U.S., it is helpful to remember that this is an industry that was demanding tax breaks for oil production even when, in 2013, the top 5 companies made a combined $93 billion in profits. In just the second quarter of 2014 alone, a year of poverty and desperation, as the industry tells it, ExxonMobil made $8.8 billion in profit.

The “better deals” that John Auers was talking about are to be found on the global market, which technically isn’t open to those “poor” U.S. crude oil producers due to the crude oil export ban. Crude oil that is produced in the U.S. is worth more if it is sold on the world market than if it is sold in the United States.

So, it should come as no surprise that in November, as oil prices began falling, U.S. producers went about finding ways to export oil using some existing exemptions from the Reagan era as well as some new approaches. Their efforts resulted in the U.S. breaking the all-time monthly export record in November 2014. The previous record was set in 1957, a time when there was no export ban.

Lord Ridley, a landed aristocrat and prominent climate denier, will earn an estimated £4.1 million each year from opencast coal mines on his Blagdon Estate with income guaranteed until 2020, a DeSmog UK investigation has found.

The British peer and author of the Rational Optimist has a total 8.4 million tonnes (Mt) of coal currently being mined near his Grade I listed stately home in Northumberland, with an additional 550,000 tonnes of coal to be mined from new sites beginning this year.

The self professed “climate change lukewarmer” adamantly denies any suggestion his coal interests influences his “skepticism” about climate science. And he continues to mine the vast expanses of coal even though he “could probably earn even more from renewable energy”.

The U.S. government could be drastically underestimating how much climate change is going to cost us, according to a study published by Stanford researchers in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The researchers concluded that the Obama Administration is using a Social Cost of Carbon estimate that may be just one-sixth of the true cost—and that the true cost is high enough to justify aggressive measures for lowering emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to the 2 degrees Celsius that scientists tell us is the threshold for averting catastrophic climate change.

The Social Cost of Carbon is an official estimate of how much economic damage will be caused per metric ton of carbon emitted into our atmosphere—damages like lower crop yields and higher healthcare costs. It is used by the EPA and other federal agencies to calculate the benefits of policies intended to improve energy efficiency, lower emissions, and combat climate change. It is also often used to justify not taking action if the proposed action would cost more than the damage it is intended to mitigate.

The Obama Administration raised its official estimate of the economic cost of a metric ton of CO2 from $21 to $37 in November 2013. Even back then, however, many experts challenged that estimate as far too low.

According to the team at Stanford, that estimate was way too low—they calculate the true Social Cost of Carbon as $220 per metric ton.

Scientists confirmed this week that 2014 was the hottest year on record with global temperatures undermining claims from climate deniers that global warming is not a serious threat to civilisation.

Both NOAA and NASA have confirmed last year was the hottest year since the invention of the thermometer; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says temperatures are 1.24F (0.69C) higher than the 20th century average while NASA calculates that 2014’s average temperature was 14.67C, or 0.68C above the average.

The results undermine leading climate denial groups, including Lord Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, who claim that an apparent plateau in global earth surface temperatures is direct proof that global warming has been widely exaggerated.

Conservative MP Peter Lilley failed to disclose a financial interest in Asian oil company Tethys Petroleum during two parliamentary debates on the Climate Change Act and energy prices, profits and poverty.

The self-described ‘global lukewarmist’ is a non-executive director of Tethys Petroleum. He argues that because the company operates solely in Central Asia his position at the company is not relevant to discussions concerning the UK.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.